


Seeds

by orphan_account



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-12 07:09:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9061849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “So might we ourselves look down into some rock-pool where lowly creatures repeat—with naïve zest—dramas learned by their ancestors æons ago.”A story of first meetings and final moments.





	1. Bodhi

There is a garden in Eadu, deep within the Imperial base, hid behind a hermetically-sealed steel barrier. The glassy white sheen of the Empire’s sedate architecture bleeds into dry grass. Long threads of foliage wrap along chrome lattice, stretching through the edges, strangling the long pipes fencing the space in. The sight is a sweeping verdurous dome, breathtaking and strange.

The moment Bodhi Rook steps in, a cool mist shoots from the corners, masking the garden in a thick haze. The fumes mean nothing by it, he's certain, but somehow the thick cloud mirrors the confusion gripping him fully, keeping him still. He’s been to bases built around greenery, but never greenery built within the bases. It is a strange but not unwelcome sight. He almost forgets about Eadu’s craggy, blackened terrain.

He takes a few careful steps until he’s in a clear patch. “Uh, is Galen Erso here?” He calls. A minute passes in silence. He clears his throat and tries again. “Galen? Galen Erso?”

“I’m here,” a tired voice answers from the other end. “My apologies. I wasn’t aware I was meant to be receiving anything today. Certainly not at such a late hour.”

The mist is still a little thick but Bodhi can hear footsteps crunching on the grass. He spots Galen Erso ambling closer and scrambles to collect the right package from his case.

“Yeah, uh, that’s totally alright. Here you go, this here, that's for you,” he stutters, holding out a small, heavy cube in one hand, a haptic manifest in the other.

The mist clears a little and Bodhi can spot the series of expressions shifting in Galen Erso’s face as he clicks on the manifest and reaches for the package in one motion. Galen inspects the cube with mild suspicion, holding it up at a careful distance and squinting at the small inscription printed along the edge.

“That’s not an explosive is it? It’s not anything bad?” Bodhi asks nervously. He chuckles to try to pass it off as a joke, but Galen shoots him a look that’s a mix of worried and grave.

“What makes you think that?” He asks, and something in his voice strikes Bodhi as a little tense.

“That was a joke. I mean. It’s just you look kind of… you made this look, with your eyes.” Bodhi gestures to his face helplessly. “Sorry I don’t think I should be asking all these questions. Please don’t report me to my CO.”

“There’s absolutely nothing to worry about,” Galen answers simply.

“All right then,” Bodhi says, with a salute. Galen salutes back. Bodhi torques to face the door but stops halfway and turns to Galen again. “If you don’t mind me asking, why does your division have a garden?”

Galen looks up and far, with a soft fondness at the silvery, virescent whole. “A little more than a decade ago, I was plucked from a tranquil life of farming. I sorely missed it, so I built this in my spare time.”

Bodhi only nods and carries on. The crunching grass and the mist and the foliage stay stuck in the back of his mind. It’s there when he lands on rusted ports and desert moons. It’s there when he walks through the sterile steel stretches leading up to his quarters. It’s there when his designated cargo ship pulls into the interminable black of space.

A week later, he finds himself back in the same garden. This time there is no mist, but a wind blows hard, blades of grass, fronds and vines whipping at the whitened shell of the space. This time, Galen Erso is ready to meet him. He collects a package almost identical to the last. Bodhi asks about the breeze, and Galen makes a joke about missing the inconveniences of an unpredictable ecosystem—the forces of nature, not unlike the Force of old lore. ( _No, that was just a malfunction_ , he will clarify in the coming weeks.)

“Have you ever heard of the Force, Bodhi Rook?” Galen inquires, holding the cube up to the light, eyes squinting to inspect an inscription at the side, as he did before.

Bodhi shrugs. “Only from fanatics.”

“Would you be surprised to hear that the Force has material underpinnings, then?”

“Really? I thought the Force was…” Bodhi mimes the vague flailing of the galaxy’s ubiquitous manic preachers. “Ineffable,” he says, mocking their breathy reverence.

“Have you ever thought about what agent binds each atom in the human body together? The body is made up of particulate matter, finer than the smallest grains of powder, and yet we remain whole, intact as we go through the course of our days, unknowing.”

Bodhi looks at his hands in wide-eyed dread. For a moment, he imagines his cells splitting apart and floating like dust in the wind. “No, not really,” he answers, mildly horrified.

Galen thanks him for the packet and lets him go. Time swells and contracts as he goes about his days. The world ahead looms large and ever stranger. The garden spills into the clatter of his background brain activity, long vines thrashing in a steady beat as if to nudge something out of his thoughts. He thinks about that and the baffling upwelling of grains fusing his body together, whatever it is that keeps him from disintegrating, Force or not. He looks out into a dark field and wonders if it’s reasonable to feel vertiginous over something without any measurable depth.

A week later he is back making the same delivery to Galen Erso. And then the week after, and then the next. There are usually rules against repeat deliveries to curb rebels from stealing significant operations intelligence, but Bodhi’s designated droid informs him that the Imperial scientist leading a principal project asked for a personal courier. He makes no further inquiries, only carrying on, just as he always has. Galen tells him a bit about the greenery each time, about his brief time in Lah'mu, sometimes a bit more about the Force, as hokey as it is enthralling.

On his sixth delivery, the garden is gone. Bodhi steps into the same steel door and expects to be met with another one of its strange inconveniences—from the mist to the gale to the rain to the heat. Instead, the sedate chrome stretches all the way to the edges of a once lush dome.

“You look disappointed,” Galen observes. “If you must know, the Empire’s project is currently undergoing a critical development stage. Any distractions… well, they had to go.”

“I liked it. I hate this,” Bodhi says, a little bitterly.

“So do I,” Galen admits.

Bodhi tries to shrug it off. Instead, a shaky laugh bubbles out of him. They make the usual exchange, Galen inspecting the case as he always has, Bodhi departing after a salute. In the days leading up to the next shipment, he learns about Galen Erso’s history: a defector with ties to the rebellion; a wife and a daughter lost to the cause. (Whether family is a burden or a luxury, he’s never quite sure—his instructors were always hazy on that. Whatever the case, he’s never known of family. That this information upsets him deeply is a little absurd.) He learns that the Empire’s superiors have always kept the Eadu sector under microscopic observation. That there is talk of the garden being used to smuggle unsanctioned items. That he has always been regarded with some air of suspicion. Bodhi wonders if he’s been put under microscopic watch, by association, and starts to peer a little too closely at every corner he passes, every droid he’s assigned, every tile he steps past, growing more and more neurotic as it eats at him slowly. In his ship, he looks out at the dark vacuum of space, at its unblinking stars, the glow of distant planets hovering far, and wonders if the rest of his life will always be like this, now.

One day, during a routine delivery, the back of his ship explodes. Sirens wail. White floods into his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The summary is lifted from Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker. Intermittent references to Star Maker will also appear in the next chapters.


	2. Cassian

The sun over the Yavinese sky hangs high and bright and full of promise. 

The day Cassian Andor is promoted to Lieutenant, he is assigned a droid. Well, gifted was the word Draven used, but K-2SO is adamantly not a _gift_. More like another one of the Alliance’s countless features to endure. Cassian suspects that the droid is more of a test. If the General thinks he is going to break him, he's got another thing coming. 

When he returns from a briefing for a reconnaissance mission, his droid is there to meet him, shuffling hurriedly in a way that almost seems like it might be anxious, if droids even have that capacity. He is almost inclined to turn the corner and avoid it altogether, but here they are.

“Cassian… I made an inquiry to General Syndulla about the nature of my reprogramming,” K-2SO starts, as it is wont to do.

“And?” Cassian groans.

“I find it highly disingenuous that—despite the emphasis the General continues to stress with regards to my free will—I’m supposed to follow you around and honor your every whim,” K finishes, head tilted in mechanical suspicion.

“If it helps you feel better, I have to follow her orders, too.”

K shakes its head. They walk on and then it says, “true freedom is a ruse.”

Cassian laughs. “Did the Empire ever allow you to speak your mind? Did you even have any opinions back then?” He shoots back, without breaking his stride.

“I don’t think so. I mean, the Alliance pretty much wiped my system clear but I imagine I couldn’t.” K lifts its head thoughtfully, as if it strains to recall.

“Consider that freedom enough,” Cassian answers simply.

“So I am only free enough to the point where I recognize my own captivity. Great!” It chirps. There is a note of disappointment that makes Cassian wonder if droids hold onto electric aspirations.

“Hey, some of us don’t get to be so lucky,” he sighs. “Freedom is a product of circumstance. Some have it more than others. Unfortunately, our circumstances aren’t the best. If it helps, you’re welcome to reframe your perspective.”

“Thanks. I’ll try to be positive about my mindful servitude, then.”

Cassian says nothing, and they walk on in synchronized steps. They almost make it to the end of the hangar in silence, until K-2SO speaks up again.

“Cassian… when does it end?” It asks.

Cassian only shoots the droid a baffled look as it gazes far out into the open field. K responds with a helpless shoulder shrug, gesturing a machine hand to the vista before them. X-Wings dot the sky as soldiers march along the pitch in a rush. Lieutenant Bey waves in their direction as she marches past, and Cassian when waves back, she doesn’t seem to notice. He turns and sees K waving back. Bey nods at K. Cassian shakes his head.

“What do you mean?” He asks, a little disgruntled.

“The Empire falls and the Alliance establishes a new world order. Suppose in this new world order, the paradigm shifts to freedom over controlled peacetime. I’m sorry to say this but, statistically, the nature of all lifeforms seems to be to act in the name of fear, honor, and self-interest.”

Cassian lifts a hand to press at his temples. This droid is insufferable. Perceptive, but insufferable. “Get to the point, K,” he says through gritted teeth.

“Broad freedom is dangerous, wouldn’t you say? I don’t think the Alliance has charted its praxis well. The rhetoric is astute and the movement is energizing in general, but after that, the plans seem to be quite a mess. In an unfettered world, countless wars will be waged. Interplanetary policing will be an inexhaustible nightmare. But I’m just saying. What do I know?” K explains, matter-of-factly.

“You prefer the chains as long as you can’t see them, is that it?”

“No!” K whines, defensive. “Obviously I prefer no chains at all, but like I said, it could be really bad. Theoretically but also demonstrably.” 

“Try not to sour on a triumph we’ve yet to claim eh, K?” 

K-2SO’s head drops with a click. It sighs its machine sigh. “Okay, Cassian.” 

They walk on to the pitch, where General Draven waits. Draven hands Cassian a packet and sends them on their way. As the ship pulls out, K looks out into the boundless void with something that almost seems to be grief. Cassian turn his gaze to the dotted stretch of black threading out into infinity, imagining where the edges lay and if he could ever hope to chase it as it spins out and ever onward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> K–2SO's observation that the strongest motives are fear, honor, and self-interest comes from Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War.


	3. Jyn

When Jyn sleeps, she dreams of starlight. 

Out of the porthole, the view is pitch-black and sparkling. She tucks herself into her mother’s arms as the pod takes them further out. Nestled in her mother’s warm woolen robes, she shuts her eyes tightly, head buzzing with trepidation. There they are, on their way to freedom. There she is, about to leave the only life she’s ever known.

When Jyn sleeps, she dreams of a voice pulling her further into the tides of sleep, the sound crackling as if coming from an intergalactic transmission, a voice breaking through the silence of the void.  

_My Stardust: listen. Let me tell you a tale about the cosmos._

_It all starts with a single grain. A grain of boundless light and energy. Of force._

_One fateful day, that grain burst out, with the light of infinite suns, flinging trillions upon trillions of stars out into space, forming galaxies that twist like a never-ending beacon in the darkness. As time went by, these stars shattered themselves into pieces that moved and twisted to the breathtaking hum of the cosmos. And so did those pieces shatter themselves to form planets. And so did those planets shatter themselves to form the comets and the moons. And so on, and so forth. And so it went, and so it goes._

_Do you know where this tale is headed? No? Let me tell you._

_Darling, it's not for nothing that I call you my Stardust._

_That grain that shattered into galaxies and into stars and into planets? It shattered into tiny grains that make up you and me. And all the water in all the worlds and all the rocks and all the snow. It's the air that we breathe and the fabric on our backs. Everything around us has and always been the same stardust, breaking and forming and breaking again, breathing new life from old light. Imagine that the tears you might have shed were once the water in a deep ocean. Imagine that your teeth once came from the surface of a swift comet. Imagine that your eyes were once twin moons from some distant plane, ever virescent in the night sky as some lost creature looks up, guided by its light to lead the way home._

_Here you are. Of all the ways the stars could have convened, into any mould, at any time, or any place, here you are. Improbable, and yet._   _Living stardust, all with a light of your own._

_Where we’re headed, things will be different. Life will be difficult. Often unpredictable, sometimes dangerous, at times sour, even lonely. It will ask much of you, regardless of how ready you are. The days may seem to pass longer. When troubles loom, I may not always be there to shield your eyes from the turmoil. Life will be uncertain. But… it will be free._

_You will be free to know a world with a warmth like the stars._

_In this life, that is the most any of us could ever ask for._  

And the voice fades away, a mist pulled out by the breeze, drowned out by thunder and rainfall.

When Jyn wakes, she is in a pit. The chill of the season clings onto the damp rocks and sneaks into her bones. Her lamp flickers, light and heat waning as the hours pass. Her mother is gone. Her father is gone. The world is a cold and terrible place, strange and uninhabitable.

Suddenly, right when she is tired and terrified and on the verge of tears, the hatch opens.

“Come, my child,” someone calls to her.

The years pass as in disaffection, the desert air harsh and torpid, grief swirling moments out of focus, time stretching and straining until it threatens to snap. Some days the threat is a roiling sea or the deafening thunder, other days it is the looming shadow of machine men. Each planet brings with it new fears and new exigencies, new planes of devastation. New ways to look at the sky above.

When her body is sore and her mind tumid, she looks up at the night sky, with its new moons and its familiar stars and its ever stranger motions. When the chill of the season stings and the force of faith wavers with the thinning air, she looks up and imagines someone standing, waiting with open arms, there at the very end of it all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Galen's story draws from the immortal words of Carl Sagan. From Cosmos: _“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”_


	4. Baze

Out there at the end of a long and winding path stands a wall rising high and heavy, a long shadow cast throughout the Jeddhaic sands. Baze looks onward at the temple and finds his gaze climbing up to the tapering spires, where the ends seem to stretch up all the way to the stars.

There are some clichés that the reverent embrace. Here it comes in bells that toll with the rising sun, the delicate grooves along pillars and peaks, the push and pull of austerity and opulence, in crystalline idols and trimmed grass and prayers uttered inexhaustibly yet soundlessly. The Temple of the Whills has been a fixture all his life, and as he comes and goes from Jeddha, it is always there, standing at the edge of the long and lonely vista, tall and mighty even as the seasons ravage the land.

When he is twelve and the Empire comes to Jeddha, he is whisked away from desert, the rising terror thrusting his family to somewhere far and harsh and unforgiving. When he turns fourteen he is handed his first blaster, and it frightens him how well he wields it. By sixteen his family is gone, by nineteen he has delivered more heads than he can bear to count, and by twenty-two he has collected enough bounties to last him at least a decade. When he turns twenty-seven he flees back to Jeddha, as he has intermittently through the years, but this time he intends to stay for good.

When Baze feels the coarse sand grate his skin as the harsh winds blow, he knows that he is finally home.

The first thing he does is come to the temple, but he doesn’t know why. Maybe to watch the sand swirl above the crystal contours, red and garish, high over the bright sky, an internecine shroud like all the blood he’s ever spilled has finally caught up to claim their due. The red rises and he stays still before the stretch of it all. He’s there for so long he can practically feel the planet torquing. Along the stone steps, a guardian stands watch with a staff to his back, and for a minute Baze thinks he is being watched, until the guardian looks on and he sees a pair of whitened eyes.

Baze leaves and returns to the temple on the next day. When he gets to the square before it, a crowd has already gathered, and the gasps and whispered exchanges tell him that there is something amiss. He weaves through the crush to get to the other side. Someone grabs him by the shoulder and shoots him an imploring look, eyeing the blaster slung on his hip, shaking his head, and mouthing _no._ Baze walks on and gets to the front anyway, the pull of exigency drawing him forward. Or maybe he was just too damn curious. Whatever it is, it brings him swiftly to the front.

Ten stormtroopers have surrounded the gates, weapons at the ready. On the other side, a lone guardian stands, firm and unyielding, staff in both hands, blank eyes facing nowhere in particular.

“Please. The Temple of the Whills is a place of peace,” the guardian pleads.

“Stand back or we’ll shoot,” one stormtrooper calls. “This is your last warning.”

The guardian shrugs. The stormtroopers raise their weapons. Baze clutches his blaster. The wind rushes. A bell tolls.

Somehow, before anybody manages to come forward, a staff rushes forward, sweeps downward, then strikes down, heavy. In three seconds, six stormtroopers are down. Four step forward and attack. The guardian rushes forward and jumps, landing on his feet over one of the assailants, felling the rest with three swings of his staff. When all ten fall, he dusts off his robes and turns back to the gates.

Then, an armored hand rises. A stormtrooper aims his blaster.

Baze shoots. The stormtrooper falls.

The guardian turns, expression aghast.

“I missed one,” he says sullenly. He turns to the crowd and somehow it’s as if he’s scanning them all, which is ridiculous. He shrugs and comes back to poke the felled assailants with his staff.

Baze steps forward.

“You’re blind,” he exclaims in disbelief.

“Wow, great observation,” the guardian snaps. “I never would have noticed.” He glares at Baze with haze-whitened eyes before turning back to the temple.

Before Baze realizes it, he’s following the guardian all the way to the stone staircase, up to the carven gates. There, the guardian turns to him.

“The Force won’t give you absolution,” he says simply. “You’ve come here to find peace?”

“What makes you think that’s what I’m here for?” Baze answers, trying but failing to curb his indignation.

The guardian says nothing, only reaching forward, hands tracing down the contours of the armor over his chest. Baze says nothing, only staring as the hand slides through the grooves and the gloss. The hand stops right at the center, light and almost hovering, but something heavy presses in Baze’s mind as the guardian stares at him with sightless eyes.

“You wear the armor of a killer. And the Force is dark around you.”

Baze says nothing. The guardian continues.

“You can seek a new path here, but that path won’t wash away your grave mistakes.”

“I’m not here for that.”

The guardian opens the gates. He steps forward. Baze turns and nearly gets on his way, but for some reason, his feet won’t budge just yet.

“Ask for Chirrut the next time you come to the temple,” the guardian says.

“Is that you?” Baze responds, without turning.

The guardian chuckles. “Yes,” is all he says.

The gates close. Baze walks on.

The next day, he comes back to the temple and knocks at the gates. When they open, Chirrut is there to meet him.


End file.
